The Psychophysiological Stressor We Think We Have Mastered... But Probably Are Doing Completely Wrong
Plus The Consequences Of This Dysfunction
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The Psychophysiological Stressor We Think We Have Mastered... But Probably Are Doing Completely Wrong
Plus The Consequences Of This Dysfunction
We Do it 7.5 Million Times Per Year on Average.
It Impacts Nearly Every Part of Our Lives.
In Fact...
You would likely Die within 6 Minutes if You Did Not Do It.
Have You Figured it Out Yet?
Breathing.
We Do it So Often...
And Usually Think We have Mastered It.
But the Truth is that Most People are Breathing Completely Dysfunctionally.
How Do We Know?
Well, According to the Research...
If You are Going to Find a Group of Individuals Who are the Best in the World at Breathing...
You will likely want to look at Athletes.
Which is what Researchers Did.
They looked at 2,000 Athletes...
To See How Well They Breathed.
The Results?
90% of them were Doing Dysfunctional Breathing.
This even Occurs at the Professional Level in Every Sport...
Even to the Olympic Level...
With the World's Best Athletes...
And the Majority of them are Still Doing Dysfunctional Breathing.
Now...
Think about this...
If 90% of Athletes, including at the Highest of Levels, have Dysfunctional Breathing...
How Do You Think Your Breathing Is Doing?
The likely Answer is...
Not Well.
And there are Serious Consequences to This in Terms of Performance in Our Lives.
Our Breathing has a Direct Impact on Our Body's Structure.
You Know how there has been a Huge Movement around "Ergonomics" for a Number of Decades...
You Know what Ergonomics Fails to Address, even though it is Essential to Proper Body Structure?
Breathing.
This becomes a Dual Problem However because Not Only is the Dysfunctional Breathing causing Stressors on the Body...
But the Improper Body Structure is Causing Further Stressors on the Body...
Further Making Functional Breathing More Difficult...
Creating what is Know as a Vicious Cycle of Negative Consequences.
This Vicious Cycle Contributes to Raising Our Baseline Stressors, or How Many Simultaneous Stressors We Have.
The Consequence Here?
We are Closer to Hitting Our Stress Threshold, or How Many Stressors we can Handle Before Going into Dis-Stress.
This Means that We Move into Dis-Stress Faster, with Less Stressful Events.
In Fact...
For Many People Today, their Baseline Stressors are "Past" their Stress Threshold...
Meaning they are in Constant Dis-Stress.
This is a Contributing Factor to the Rates of Burnout Spreading Beyond 80% of the Workforce Today.
But this is Not the Only Consequence to Dysfunctional Breathing.
When We Breath with Dysfunction, We Typically See Two Problems...
Breath is Not Getting "Low" Enough in the System, Meaning there is Less Efficient Exchange of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide...
And...
We Flood Our Bodies with Oxygen as We Lose a Tolerance for Carbon Dioxide.
This Causes Many Problems.
When the Body is Not Exchanging Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide Efficiently, it Means that the Body Needs to Work "Harder" to Get Enough Oxygen.
This Causes Faster Breathing Patterns, which Creates a Subconscious Signal in the Body that We are in Danger.
This can Cause Us to Remain in Constant Fight-or-Flight States, which Directly and Negatively Impacts Our Ability to Think Clearly.
Then...
When We Look at Flooding the Body with Oxygen and Losing Our Tolerance for Carbon Dioxide, we See Significantly More Issues.
The Body Needs Oxygen to Create Energy (Mg-ATP) through a Reaction with Iron.
The Problem, however, is that this Reaction is Highly Reactive.
It Creates what is Known as Oxidative Stress, or "Stress Damage".
Your Body Needs a Certain Amount of Reactions to Occur to Create Enough Energy (Mg-ATP) for Survival...
But...
Too Many Reactions will Cause the Body to Fill More Stress Damage than it Can Remove.
Think of it like a Lot of Trash Building Up.
If the Body Does Not Clean Up Fast Enough...
Then the Trash, or Stress Damage, begins to Accumulate...
And Accumulation Causes More and More Problems as it Fills Up Further in Your Body.
When Your Body is Flooded with Oxygen...
It Causes More of these Reactions to Happen at Inopportune Times, making the Problem Significantly Worse.
Causing yet "More" Stressors on the Body...
Accumulating a Higher Level of Baseline Stressors...
And Further Contributing to the Vicious Cycle that is at Play.
With this...
When the Body is Quickening the Pace of Energy (Mg-ATP) Production, it Burns through Our Resources More Quickly.
This Requires us to Fuel Up More Frequently on Certain Macronutrients and Micronutrients.
This Quickening Pace May Not Feasibly be Something We can Keep Up With, which can Cause More Challenges are the Body Struggles with Cycles of Not Having Enough Resources at the Time they are Needed.
Then, Our Body Triggers the Subconscious Response to Breathing when We Reach a Certain Level of Carbon Dioxide.
But...
The Level at Which this Response Occurs can Change, or what You would Call Your Carbon Dioxide Tolerance.
This Response is an Incredibly Potent Survival Mechanism, and that is Why it can Become So Problematic.
When We Lose a Tolerance for Carbon Dioxide...
Our Body becomes Triggered Faster into a Fight-or-Flight Mode based on What is "Perceived" as Getting Too Close to "Suffocation" Too Quickly.
Now, this is Occurring at the Level of Our Nervous System and Not our Brains...
So "Logically" We May Understand that We are Not Suffocating, and that We are Safe with Plenty of Oxygen Around Us.
But...
The Nervous System Does Not Work on the Same Logic as Our Brain.
The Nervous System is "Solely" Focused on Our Carbon Dioxide Tolerance to Understand if We are Too Close to "Perceived Suffocating".
The More Often We are "Too Close", the More Stressors this Will Cause.
Can You See a Pattern Here?
Which Brings us to the Master of Patterns when it Comes to Psychophysiology...
Habits.
When we Perform a Behavior Consistently Over Time...
It Becomes a Habit.
The Challenge for Most People...
They have been Doing Dysfunctional Breathing for So Long...
That it has Become a Deeply Ingrained Habit.
So it has Become the "Norm" for the Body, and How it Operates.
Ironically, what Should be a Mechanism for Our Health...
Becomes a Subconscious Weapon Against Our Goals.
Now...
Will Fixing Our Breathing Solve All of the Problems We Have?
Of Course Not.
As Humans, We are Far More Complex and Need More than Just Improving Our Breathing.
But...
Because Our Breathing Directly and Indirectly Influences so Many Aspects of Our Lives, it is a Dysfunctional Pattern that We "Do" Need to Fix.
It is a Base Upon which Many More Aspects of Our Lives Can be Improved.
So Make Sure that You Put a Strong Effort into Fixing Your Breathing.
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So the next question is How?
What does Functional Breathing actually Look Like?
Well, the Basics can be Understood in Four Steps.
You can Always Build from the Basics.
But without the Basics, You will Struggle.
Let’s Dive In…
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